


always means always

by MicrosuedeMouse



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Breakups, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25064089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MicrosuedeMouse/pseuds/MicrosuedeMouse
Summary: Annie needs to get away from Denver for a bit, and Abed once offered his couch if she ever wanted to come to LA, so she asks if she can come visit for a couple weeks.She can come visit for as long as she wants, but Abed doesn't say that. He just says yes.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Abed Nadir, past Annie Edison/Jeff Winger
Comments: 36
Kudos: 196





	always means always

**Author's Note:**

> Hmmmm hello, I'm late to this party
> 
> Until recently I had seen a small number of random Community episodes, and absorbed a lot of the show through tumblr. For some reason, about a month ago, I started thinking about this ship kind of out of nowhere (I didn't even realise I'd consumed enough of the show to have feelings about ships, but hey) and read some fic and decided it was finally time to watch the show properly. I finished it a couple days ago!
> 
> I started a lot of fic while I was still watching, but held off on posting anything until I had finished. Now that I'm there I've got a few completed drafts to edit/post and a whole bunch more WIPs to keep working on until the next hyperfixation rears its head. So you can expect to see more of me popping up for a little while, and then probably at random points for years to come when my brain cycles back around, as it always does to the ships that really get me... you know how it is. If you enjoy this keep your eyes peeled :) I have to say, of the things I've started for this fandom, this is one of my favourites so far.
> 
> p.s. I don't _hate_ Jeff, but I don't _love_ him either, and uh... I think in this one you can tell, haha. So. If you're a Jeff fan, I'm sorry. :P
> 
> p.p.s. if you're wondering what the heck is up with this format: I don't have answers. It just kinda happened, and I let it.

When Annie calls, it seems like it’s out of nowhere. Normally, their rare phone calls are planned in advance, when they both know they’ve got the free time to talk. They text weekly, at least, but it’s not the same, especially for someone as verbose as Abed is.

“Annie?” he asks, concerned, lifting the phone to his ear and turning his back to the set. He covers his other ear and takes a few steps away. “Is something wrong?”

“I– god, I’m sorry,” she stammers, and he can picture the look on her face, like she’s already kicking herself. “I should’ve at least texted first. Are you busy?”

He glances over his shoulder at the actors, massaging their temples in exhaustion. “Nah. I was just watching the eighty-second take of this scene. There’s really nothing I can do to help at this point.”

“I– did you say _eighty-second?_ ” Her incredulity distracts her for a moment.

“Yeah. It’s just that it’s a continuous shot with kind of a tongue-twister of a script and some complicated hand-eye coordination stuff – they’re not _always_ this bad.” He watches an exasperated AC snap the clapperboard again, then returns his attention to the phone call. “What’s going on?”

There’s a pause, and in his mind’s eye he can see her so clearly, chewing her lip. Finally she takes a deep breath and says, “A year or so ago, you said there was always room for me on the couch, if I ever wanted to drop by. Does that offer… still stand?”

Abed raises his eyebrows a little, surprised. He’s seen her new, grown-up apartment; didn’t think she’d ever want to take him up on that invitation. “Of course it does,” he tells her. “Always means _always_. Why, do you have a case in LA or something?” Normally the bureau puts her up in a hotel room, but he can’t think of any other reason she’d be coming his way.

“No, no, nothing like that.” She sighs. “It’s just… I don’t know. Things have been… a _lot_ , lately. And I think I just need out of Colorado for a little bit. I have a couple weeks’ vacation I’ve never taken – my supervisor keeps reminding me to use them before they expire – and I just… I just thought of you.” He can hear her swallow, even through the phone. “I-I don’t mean to impose on you for two whole weeks! Maybe just a couple days? I-I don’t know, I just. Wanted to see you.”

“You can come for two weeks if you want,” he tells her. She could come for two months if she wanted. Or longer. But he doesn’t say that. “Annie, what’s wrong?” he asks again, because he knows it’s _something_.

“It’s… I mean, it’s nothing urgent,” she answers with yet another sigh. “I’d rather explain it in person? I… I have a few things to wrap up at the office, but I could probably catch a flight this weekend, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. We actually wrap up shooting for a little while on Thursday, so I won’t be doing much this weekend, anyway. Or for a bit after that.” He’s still worried, because she’s being evasive, but he knows what Annie sounds like when she’s outright lying. ‘Nothing urgent’ had been the truth, even if it _was_ irritatingly vague. “Text me your flight details once you have it booked. I’ll come pick you up.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she says immediately. “No one likes LAX.”

“Obviously. That’s why I’m coming to pick you up,” Abed explains. “That, and it sounds like you need a hug.”

Annie almost laughs. “You really have grown.”

Only for her, he thinks. He still hates it when most people touch him. But he doesn’t say _that_ out loud, either.

(When he returns to the set, tucking his phone back into his pocket, the other tired assistant, Song, gives him a curious look. “Who was that?” she asks, clearly looking for any distraction from the monotony of – Abed checks the clapper – eighty-four takes.

“Best friend,” he answers absently, peering at the clock on the wall. Someone forgot to wind it back. Continuity error in the making. He’ll get it before take eighty-five.

“The filthy rich one?” she asks.

“Hm? Oh. No.” He glances her way. It’s easy to forget that no matter what he tells people about Troy, it’s the money they remember. It hardly seems like the most important detail, but there’s no accounting for other people’s values, he supposes. “Other best friend.”

She narrows her eyes, thinking, then snaps her fingers. “Oh! The hot FBI one!” She’s grinning now, pleased with herself for remembering. To her credit, she’s one of the few people on this crew who doesn’t dismiss his stories of his friends out of hand. A lot of them seem to think he’s making people up.

“Yeah,” he says, though again, that seems like a criminally simplistic summary. “That’s Annie.”)

Abed is still driving the same grey sedan she remembers from her last visit – too long ago – and Annie breathes a deep sigh of relief when she spots it in the pick-up area. When Abed steps out, meeting her eye and smiling his subtle smile, she almost starts to cry.

She tries not to rush, but before she knows it she’s standing eight feet from the car and Abed is in front of her, folding her into his familiarly awkward-but-warm embrace. “You look like you’re dealing with a lot,” he observes, in his usual matter-of-fact kind of way, and she clutches at the back of his sweater, the hot tears she’d been valiantly holding back now spilling against her will.

“Yeah,” she croaks into his shoulder, mad at herself for breaking down. She’d been doing so well. But this is Abed, and he’s not judging her.

“This place is crowded,” he says, dropping his arms and taking the handle of her polka-dot suitcase out of her hand. “Let’s go.”

“That’s a good idea,” she agrees with a nod. He turns and tosses her luggage into his back seat, on top of the takeout wrappers and crumpled screenplays, and she climbs into the passenger side. There’s an old _Inspector Spacetime_ keychain hanging from his rear-view mirror, and a movie score she recognises vaguely but can’t quite place playing through the radio, and for a second she’s back at Greendale and nothing is wrong.

He glances at her every so often as he navigates his way out of the hellish maze of airport parking, but doesn’t speak until he makes it onto the highway. Now that they’re finally moving smoothly, he says: “Tell me what’s going on.”

She smiles despite herself. Of course Abed wasn’t going to waste time asking how her flight had been, or whether she wanted to stop for a bite to eat, or any of the usual pleasantries. Of course he was going to cut straight to the chase.

Annie looks out the window for a second, composing herself, and pulls her cardigan a little tighter. Deep breath. And then: “It’s Jeff,” she says, her voice only shaking a tiny bit. “We’re over. For good this time.”

If she didn’t know better, she could almost swear he winces slightly when she says it. “I was afraid of that,” he answers softly. Maybe he can see her watching his profile, because he explains himself. “You didn’t mention him on the phone. And I don’t think you’ve ever taken two weeks away from him unless it was for work.”

She grimaces, hating that he’s right. Every day it feels more like the last two and a half years have been a total waste. “Yeah, well. That’s probably part of the problem. At any rate, it’s _done_ , and I’m not taking him back.”

From the upward twitch of Abed’s eyebrows, she realises that last part surprised him. “Did… _you_ break it off?” he asks slowly, glancing at her in the mirror.

“Yeah.” She swallows and squares her shoulders again. “And I should’ve done it a lot sooner.”

He’s quiet for a minute or two, thinking. “I’ll make you a bowl of buttered noodles, and you can tell me everything,” he says finally. There’s a pause. “And by _everything_ , obviously I mean whatever you want to tell me. Even if it’s nothing at all.”

(Annie’s already had the wine-and-ice-cream night, the day after the breakup. A coworker, Penny, had noticed immediately that something was wrong, and at the words “Jeff and I are done,” she’d been ready to drop everything. Annie had persuaded her to wait for the end of the day.

They’d gone back to Penny’s apartment and sat on the couch and Penny had let Annie vent _everything_. Never having met Jeff, she was the ultimate supportive post-breakup friend, ready to trash-talk him for every single complaint Annie had. It was cathartic, but… that was also the problem. Penny had never met Jeff.

It hadn’t taken Annie long to realise that what she needed was someone who’d been there the whole time. Who knew Jeff as well as she did, who’d watched them orbit each other for years before finally closing the gap. Someone she didn’t have to explain the phenomenon of _Jeff Winger_ to before she could list off all the reasons it was over.

She isn’t sure why, in retrospect, she’d felt so powerfully that it had to be Abed. Despite time and distance, he’s still her best friend, but he also isn’t the person most people would go to with relationship problems. Nonetheless, she’d called him another day or two later, and the immediate _of course you can come_ had been the first true relief she’d felt since the breakup itself.)

Annie spills her soul to him over that bowl of buttered noodles. Everything she’s clearly kept herself from talking about for the last few years is suddenly out there, and Abed listens patiently while she confirms every concern he’s ever had about that relationship.

He doesn’t say so, because it’s not about him. ( _Character growth_ , he thinks idly.) He just lets her talk. He holds her hand when she reaches across the table for him, and he grabs a roll of toilet paper when she starts crying – without her for a roommate, he’s not the kind of person who owns a box of tissues – and he hugs her when she starts to look small and lonely again. Aside from Troy, she’s the only person he hugs this easily, and he wonders if she knows that, but again, he doesn’t mention it.

“I really thought he’d finally _learned_ ,” she says bitterly. “Every single time, I let myself believe that he’d learned. But he was never _really_ going to think of me as his equal. As a peer. There would always be _something_ to make him see me like a kid he had to take care of. So many times he proved that, and every time he apologised I _believed_ him, Abed.”

“In your defense,” he points out, squeezing her fingers again, “Persuasiveness was always Jeff’s thing. He built a career on it – built his whole _identity_ around it, for a long time. He’s handsome and charismatic and convincing. I can’t really blame you for believing him.”

She gives him a withering look, though she seems more frustrated with herself than with him, really. “Still. It happened _so many times_. I thought I was a faster learner than that.”

“You are a fast learner,” Abed assures her. “But you’re also an optimist. You see the best in people, and you believe in their ability to be as good as you think they are. Plus, you love with your whole heart. That can blind you to some things. But it’s a good quality. Jeff was taking advantage of it, even if he didn’t mean to be.”

She softens at that, blows her nose again, and scoots her chair closer to his around the little table now that she’s finished eating. “I’m sorry,” she sighs, and now she just sounds tired. “You’re _his_ friend, too. I shouldn’t be– I don’t know. Trying to make you get mad at him with me.”

“Oh, I’m livid,” he tells her, and the way she glances up to meet his eye, he suspects she catches the callback. “Jeff is my friend, but he hurt you, and you’re a lot more important to me than he is. If someone asked me to pick between you, I’d pick you every time.”

Annie smiles, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Thanks,” she whispers, sniffling. “That means a lot.” He grips her hand tightly, hoping she understands that he’s in her corner. He has her back. There was a time, years ago, that he’d gotten angry with her for disrupting the fabric of the group – but now, with time and distance to clear his vision, he doesn’t care about ‘the group.’ Not if it comes down to it.

He loves Shirley, and Britta. He loves Frankie and Elroy, though he doesn’t talk to them that often. He loves Jeff, regardless of how willing he is to admit it right now. He even loved Pierce. But he doesn’t _need_ them. Not the way he needs Troy and Annie. Troy Barnes and Annie Edison are the two most important people in Abed’s world, if in very different ways, and as long as he has them, he can weather any other loss.

(Over the course of the night, it becomes clear that Jeff’s tendency to treat Annie like a kid was far from the only reason she ran out of patience. It’s a big thing, the kind of repeat offense that she keeps circling back to, but it’s definitely not the only thing.

“He has exes _everywhere,_ ” she gripes at one point, pulling a face. “I mean – it’s not that I’m _shaming_ him for it, or whatever. That’s his business. But do you know how unsettling it is to walk around with your boyfriend and run into someone he’s slept with every other _day?_ And like, they’re all gorgeous and older than me and have that whole, like, _I’m a confident woman with her shit together_ vibe, and the ones who don’t hate him go straight to _flirting_ with him instead, like I’m not even _there_ … There’s only so much of that you can _take_.” Abed _doesn’t_ know how unsettling that is, to be quite honest, but judging by Annie’s face, it’s pretty bad.

“Every time I introduced him to people, and said he was a teacher at my alma mater, they’d suddenly look again and realise the age difference between us and come to this… this _scandalous_ conclusion,” she complains not long after, waving the spoon she’s been using to scrape out the bottom of a carton of ice cream he found in his freezer. “ _Every time_. And every time, I had to pretend it was so funny, when I explained they were misunderstanding. But honestly, it wasn’t even funny the _first_ time.” He just frowns and nods, because he can’t imagine how it _would_ be funny.

“He’s still the _worst_ at admitting he’s wrong,” she adds later, and he doesn’t have trouble believing that. “Even about stuff that’s in _my field!_ Like, I’d be talking about a suspect in a case, and he’d interrupt at some point to be like _oh that part’s not actually illegal, Annie,_ and it’s like, okay, Mr. I-Faked-Most-Of-My-Law-Career, which one of us works for the _FBI?_ ” She rakes her hands back through her hair, pulling at it in frustration. “And you know – I think he kind of resented that, too. I’m not sure if he even knew it, but he hated feeling like I was more successful than him. Maybe _especially_ because I’m so much younger than him.”

This one almost breaks him – almost makes him actually say something angry. Because Abed can’t imagine ever begrudging Annie her dream career. She’d worked so hard to reach it, given up so much. And she’s so _passionate_ about it. The thought of being anything but elated for her is ridiculous.

But he sticks to supportive statements instead of outright mad ones, because he’s realised that if he actually lets on much how upset he is by all this, she feels guilty instead of vindicated. So he says, “That’s crazy. He should be proud of you.” _I’m proud of you_ , he doesn’t add.

At one in the morning, they’re laying side-by-side on his living room carpet, staring at the ceiling. “I fought _so hard_ to get a job at the Denver office so he wouldn’t have to leave Greendale,” she says softly, the first thing she’s said in a while. “There were so many opportunities I could’ve pursued at Quantico. But I went back to Colorado for him.”

Abed squeezes her hand again, where their fingers are laced on the floor between them.)

After a day or two of venting and crying, she realises she’s tired of talking about Jeff. Tired of thinking about him. She’s got two weeks off work, and she’s got more than a few hours to spend with Abed for the first time in years, and she doesn’t want to waste it.

“Show me all your favourite places in Hollywood,” Annie asks on her third morning in his apartment, over bowls of sugary cereal. “I don’t want to lay here feeling sorry for myself any more. I need a distraction. And I miss going on adventures with you.”

He pauses, spoon halfway to his mouth, and gives her a slight smile. “You know that none of my favourite places in Hollywood are the _usual_ favourite places in Hollywood,” he points out, looking amused.

“That’s why I’m asking,” she tells him. “I’ve heard you talk about it, but for some dumb reason I’ve only visited you here once since you moved. I want to see Hollywood through your eyes.” The dumb reason is Jeff, who couldn’t vacation as much as he might’ve liked on a teacher’s paycheque, and never seemed to want to go anywhere that wasn’t a beach. But she’s not thinking about Jeff.

“Okay,” he says, and though she’s out of practice reading his subtle expressions, she can see he’s pleased. “Did you have anything in mind? Food? Sights? History?”

“I’ll leave it up to my tour guide,” Annie answers, smiling broadly now. “Anywhere you think is worth taking me sounds great.”

“Got it.” He taps his fingertips on the table, eyes already out of focus as he thinks it over. “Yeah, I have some ideas. I’ll have it figured out by the time we’re done breakfast.”

It’s the best day she’s had in months, if not longer. It feels a little like the summer they spent alone, after Troy left but before Britta moved in – the summer that really cemented the depth of their friendship, when they had free time in spades and rarely saw any of their other friends. The weather is beautiful, and Abed leads her all over the city, and she doesn’t even care that she doesn’t have an itinerary or a checklist.

They visit the park where he shot his first film post-move, completely on his own, playing all three roles himself. “It was terrible,” he admits freely. “But it was fun. And it gave me a lot of ideas that have grown into way more promising projects.” Then he takes her to a small, out-of-the-way museum, one that’s usually ignored by most of the tourist traffic, that houses a collection of props and costumes and other memorabilia from some of his favourite obscure science-fiction movies – the ones he watched on TV as a kid, late at night, when his parents were too busy arguing to realise he hadn’t gone to bed. Later he gets her a guest pass for the studio where he works and shows her the soundstage where they taped some of the old black-and-white classics he’d shown her back at Greendale, years ago. She’d fallen in love with the chivalry and charm of Clark Gable and Errol Flynn and Fred Astaire, and she has a sneaking suspicion now that this isn’t one of _his_ particular favourite places in Hollywood at all, but when she asks him about it he only shrugs and smiles.

She doesn’t hold it against him.

(They conclude their day in his favourite hole-in-the-wall pizza joint, which is – he’d already checked – very kosher-friendly. It’s also, incidentally, delicious.

“God, I missed you,” she says at one point, grinning at him from her spot on his left at the window seats, and he stops with the pizza still hanging from his mouth, as if taken by surprise. “I mean, I _knew_ I missed you, but this is the most fun I’ve had in ages. I think somehow I actually managed to forget _how_ much I loved spending a whole day goofing off with you.”

Abed chews for a moment, swallows, and finally gives her a silly grin. “Told you you needed more immaturity in your life,” he teases, wagging his eyebrows, and she laughs aloud.

“Maybe I need you around to remind me of that more often,” she says, leaning her elbow on the counter and her face on her hand.

“Well, you always know where to find me,” he answers, his smile shifting to something smaller, more genuine. “And even if you didn’t, you’re in the FBI. You’d figure it out.”

Annie giggles softly and returns to her dinner, feeling… warm. Abed is the warmest person she’s ever met, she thinks, as hard as that might be to believe if you didn’t know him like she does. Maybe he doesn’t always understand people very well, and maybe he takes a while to get used to, but he’s so earnest. And though he hasn’t always shown it obviously, he cares about her so much it’s almost overwhelming to think about. Very few people have ever proven, ultimately, to care as much about her as he does.)

Annie has been staying with him for not quite five days and he never, ever wants her to leave.

“I missed this,” she says, for what seems like the hundredth time, not that he wants her to stop saying it. This time it’s while they’re sitting on the floor in their pyjamas, a blanket propped up overhead, drinking special drink and watching stupid YouTube videos on his laptop. _I missed us_ is the reply that burns in his throat, unspoken, and he sucks harder on his curly straw, reminding himself that it’s not about him. It’s about her.

Then again, from Abed’s perspective, everything has always been about her.

He’d invited her to the study group for a reason. He’d made her the Leia to his Han for a reason. He’d asked her to move into the apartment with him and Troy for a reason. Even if it was a reason he’d had to keep to himself for all these years, a reason he had no real business making known, it was a _reason_. It still is a reason. And in a way, it’s its own reason not to say anything, too, because it’s the last thing she needs right now.

“Imagine if Troy were here,” he comments between videos, a belated response. He smiles a little when he says it, like he’s not chasing himself in circles around his own head. “It would be just like old times. If I closed the curtains so we couldn’t look out the window, you wouldn’t even know we weren’t at Casa Trobedison anymore.”

Annie smiles back, a little wistfully. “I do miss him,” she agrees. “And it would be fun, all three of us together again. We should do that sometime.” Then she’s quiet for a second, and he glances from the search bar up to her face, because it feels like she’s not done. When she catches him watching, she does something else with her face – she’s trying not to look sheepish, he thinks. “But I really like this, too,” she finally adds, barely audible. “Just you and me. It feels… right. Exactly what I needed.”

And something in him aches, and oh, she is his reason.

(Around dinner time, Abed feels his phone buzz, and pulls it from the breast pocket of his pyjamas with mild curiosity. It’s not Troy’s custom text tone, and Annie’s in the room, so he honestly isn’t sure what it might be a notification _for_. The two of them make up a solid 90% of his incoming messages.

It’s a text from Song. _A bunch of us from the crew are hitting Kat’s Palace tonight,_ it reads, referring to the basement bar around the block from the studio. _You wanna join us?_

He glances over at Annie, dancing to a tune that only she can hear as she stirs a pot of macaroni on his stove. She’d probably like a lot of his coworkers. They’re an easygoing bunch. And introducing her to them might even have the bonus effect of lending a little credence to his apparently not-so-believable Greendale stories – if his ‘hot FBI friend’ is real, maybe the rest of his friends are, too.

She looks his way with a bright smile. “We need more cheese than _that!_ ” she tells him, laughing as she gestures down at what he’s grated. “Did Shirley teach you _nothing?_ ”

“It’s been a while since I had to cook for more than one person,” he defends himself, but she only _tsks_ playfully and turns back to the pasta.

 _No thanks_ , he types back to Song. _My night’s booked. Maybe next time._ Then he puts his phone face-down on the table and pushes it out of the way, returning to his ingredient-preparation duties as Annie’s obedient sous-chef.)

Annie feels more at home than she’s felt in years. She loves her job, and she likes her apartment, and it’s nice that in Colorado she’s still close to the comfort of Greendale and to Frankie and one of Troy’s several houses. But with Abed, she’s _home_ in a way she’d almost forgotten she could be.

It’s odd, she starts to reflect late one night, rolling over on the couch she’s made her bed. She hasn’t had a roommate since officially leaving apartment 303 – it never felt _right_. Even at the time, the idea of living with anyone besides Abed or Troy or Britta (but mostly Abed; he was the constant) had just seemed… well, _bad_. She’d reasoned it was a combination of factors: one’s own, perfectly private space was a novelty, a _luxury_ , even, when you’d spent your first seventeen years under the scrutiny of controlling parents and your very first escape from that had been straight into rehab. That first apartment, above Dildopolis, had seemed like a haven for its privacy – at least until everything else about it had settled in. So moving in with Abed and Troy, while challenging at times, had seemed an awful lot better than staying where she was. And then she’d just gotten used to it. Abed, Troy, and later Britta: they’d informed her sense of what _home_ was. But she still craved that space of her own, so if she wasn’t going to be living with them anymore, alone seemed best.

She and Jeff had spent a lot of time in one another’s apartments, of course. They’d often gone weeks without sleeping separately. He’d tried to persuade her to move in with him a few times, but she’d always been insistent that she still needed a space that was just _hers,_ and that the commute from Greendale to Denver was absolutely no fun at seven in the morning (and now, of course, she’s grateful). She’d felt just about as comfortable at his place as she ever did in her own, but… now, comparing it to here on Abed’s sofa, neither of them seem like they’d ever really been sufficient at all.

“You make me feel like I belong,” she tells him in the morning. “When I’m with you, it’s so easy to feel like I’m exactly where I should be.”

She doesn’t mention, out loud, that no matter how she frames it, he’s the common denominator. That when she breaks it down to its basic pieces, the only conclusion she can reach is that _Abed_ is home. (She’s always heard that home can be people.) If she lists every place she’s ever lived, it’s only the ones where he was too that she felt like this. His second-hand corduroy couch with her suitcase on the floor next to it is more like home than her own apartment, full of all the grown-up things she’d picked out and curated all by herself.

And it’s a whole lot more like home than Jeff ever was.

(It takes her a little by surprise, later, when he says, “My apartment feels better with you in it.”

Annie looks up from her sandwich, eyebrows raised, and he licks his lips. “I was thinking about what you said earlier,” he explains. “About feeling like you belong. Having my own place is nice, and I guess I’m lucky I can afford it… but it’s better with you here. It’s better with Troy here, too, but usually when he’s in California we hang out at his place instead, because he’s got the better TV. I don’t think I’ve really had a guest stay here for this long, actually. Not many people visit me. But with you here, it’s… just better.”

Abed looks down at his plate, and she can’t quite decide what his expression means. He might be irritated that he’s struggling to articulate what he’s saying. Or… he might be a little self-conscious of the sentiment itself.

“I feel better in your apartment,” she answers slowly, smiling. “So the feeling is mutual, I guess.”

There’s a pause, and then he smiles, eyes still cast down and away from her, but it’s that smile he gets when he has an idea. “A fun twist on the _home with a consciousness_ concept,” he suggests, almost amused. “Usually reserved for horror. ‘The house isn’t _haunted_ by evil, it _is_ the evil.’ But why should the emotions of a residential building be limited to hatred and hunger and violence? What if a home could love someone?” His gaze is far away now, somewhere out the window, and she can see the gears turning in his head.

“That sounds like a movie I’d really enjoy,” Annie tells him honestly, her smile growing wide as something warm blooms in her chest.)

His chest tightens up a little, when he realises they’ve passed the halfway point of her stay, but Annie is so full of sunshine it’s like she’s forgotten Jeff completely and he doesn’t want anything to dull that light. He wants to bask in it, actually. It makes him feel a little guilty, but then – she came to him to feel better, and now she feels better, so he’s earned the right to share in her glow a little, hasn’t he? He’s not trying to claim it, to bottle it just for himself. Only admire it.

“I thought this would be harder,” she admits to him one afternoon, walking down the street with her arm looped casually through his, wearing a sundress that makes her look like the main character of everything.

“The breakup?” Abed clarifies, wondering if she’s noticed he’s barely looking where they’re going because he can’t stop watching her instead.

She looks at him and nods. “I mean… it _was_ hard, at first. I felt awful. But then I came here, and I told you everything, and we made some amazing mac ‘n cheese, and now it’s like the whole thing has been purged from my system. I feel free.”

“Good,” he answers, returning her smile. “I don’t like it when you’re unhappy.” The way she makes it sound like he’s _responsible_ for how much better she feels, even _partially_ , makes his heart speed up unfairly.

“Y’know the whole _pulling-off-the-band-aid_ analogy?” Annie asks, and he nods. “It’s kind of like that, but like– like I didn’t _just_ have to pull off the band-aid and deal with the pain. It’s like I’ve been avoiding pulling off the band-aid for _months_ , or maybe _years_ , and it turns out the cut underneath healed ages ago and I was just tricking myself into thinking it was still there because I couldn’t actually see it. Now the band-aid is gone and the thing it was hiding is gone and I’m as good as new.”

He’s fairly certain that all this means she’s over Jeff – like, _really, actually_ over him – and he’s glad. Mostly for her sake. A little bit selfishly, too, but she doesn’t have to know.

(He can’t remember, later, what it is that she says or does that inspires him to shift into character. Something noir, the drama and machismo and _broodiness_ of it all laid on as thick as the clouds of cigarette smoke he imagines swirling around his head. All he can remember is the raw joy he feels when instead of just laughing and carrying on, like he expects her to do, Annie immediately matches the mood, slipping into the role of a mysterious _femme fatale_ without so much as a pause. It’s been years since they’ve done this – years since _anyone_ besides Troy has indulged him this way – but it feels like they never stopped.

Ignoring the bustle of tourists and harried assistants and aspiring actors with half-broken spirits, they roleplay their way down several city blocks, through the grocery store, and all the way back to his apartment. He’s two-thirds of the way to solving the murder of her sister, a reclusive heiress with complex ties to the occult, by the time they make it in the door and she apologetically breaks character. “I have to pee _so bad_ ,” she admits with a snicker, suddenly Annie again instead of Lavender Lalonde, and as much fun as he’s been having, he’s hard-pressed to feel disappointed when he sees her.

Abed perches on the edge of the couch and pulls out a notebook to scrawl down a few of the ideas their game has given him, trying to get some of his really good dialogue on paper before he forgets it. Vaguely, he registers the sound of her emerging from the bathroom, but he’s preoccupied and doesn’t look up. A moment later, he feels her small hand gentle on his shoulder blade, and suddenly his brain is working at half the speed. Swallowing quietly, he tries to keep writing, aware that she’s leaning over him to peer at the page.

“Let me know when you’re done,” she says softly after a moment, a smile on her voice, and then her hand trails across the back of his shoulders as she heads for the kitchen. He can hear her putting away his groceries and pulling a frying pan out of the cupboard to start on dinner. A couple more thoughts, only half-formed now, make their way onto his page before he has to look up.

Annie’s swaying gently in front of his stove, her back to him, humming something to herself. Golden late-afternoon sunlight is splashing its way into his kitchen, setting her aglow, the warmth of her contrasting so dramatically with the dull beiges of his counter and grubby backsplash. The sounds of her knife on the cutting board and a capful of oil beginning to sizzle in the frying pan lend just the right weight to the atmosphere, anchoring it firmly in reality, and Abed can’t breathe; he couldn’t have set up a more perfect shot with all the time in the world.

Belatedly, he scrambles for his phone to take a photo. It’s nothing compared to the real thing, but he thinks he’ll spend his whole life trying to replicate this image, and it’s worth having _something_ to help him remember the most beautiful sight he’s ever laid eyes on.)

It’s not that she’s _forgotten_ Jeff, exactly. She’s still mad she wasted so much time on him, and still sorry to have lost something that once seemed so reliable. Probably she’s still sensitive in places – invisible bruises, she thinks, that she won’t even know hurt until she manages to bump them. She might discover any number of them when she gets back home to Colorado, where traces of him will be all over her apartment, her neighbourhood, her routine.

But she doesn’t _ache_. She doesn’t _grieve_.

Right now she’s surrounded by Abed and nothing about him is even remotely Jeff and everything about him is joy.

He apologises a great deal before closing himself in his bedroom for an hour or two one afternoon to join a video conference with some of the rest of his crew, talking out the next steps for production. Just because filming is on hiatus doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. But Annie doesn’t find she minds it that much. She’d rather be with him, of course – she barely wants to go to sleep at night, reluctant to miss a minute, like a child at a slumber party – but it gives her the opportunity to explore every inch of his living room, marveling in all the little details of a space that’s pure Abed.

She leafs through the takeout menus on the kitchen counter, and inspects shelves full of figurines and collectibles. She runs her fingers along the spines of DVD cases in the shelf, noting the titles she recognises, sometimes pulling out something new to the collection so she can inspect the cover. It used to drive her up the wall that they weren’t alphabetised (Abed prefers to organise by genre, then by year), but now, it crosses her mind that she _likes_ that he has his own system. In many ways he’s just as organised as she is – it’s just that what makes the most sense to him might be different from what makes the most sense to her. It might not be so bad to learn to order things like he does, she thinks. After all, she’s not actually bad at leaving behind her familiar rules if there’s a _new_ set of rules to be adopted. Learning to think in new ways, in fact, is _useful_. (She wasn’t always so good at this, admittedly, but the FBI has taught her to be flexible that way – the rulebooks might change from state to state or case to case, but there always _is_ one.)

Mostly, she spends her time admiring the photos on the wall – she’d looked at them in the first day or so, but now she gets to really take them in. Some of them she’s never seen before: a crew photo from his first Hollywood job, a selfie taken with Troy at what she assumes is Troy’s place in LA, a rather charming picture of his father in the kitchen back at the falafel restaurant. (She supposes that means their relationship is still improving, and that heartens her somewhat.) But most of the photos are familiar. Some of them were on display back in apartment 303, especially the ones with Troy. A lot of the others are of her, or other members of the study group, or all of them at once. She bites back a smile as she inspects each one, remembering the days they were taken.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asks, and she turns around to see him standing in his bedroom doorway, hands in his pockets, head tipped to one side.

“Done already?” she responds, surprised. He nods, and she holds up the frame she’s been looking at. “I don’t remember this one.”

Abed crosses the living room for a closer look. It’s a photo of her, candid, standing in their shared kitchen and laughing at something out of frame. To her surprise, leaning over her shoulder to peer at it, he smiles gently. “It actually wasn’t a photo,” he explains, voice soft near her ear. “It’s a still from something I was filming. Troy and I were goofing off, and I hadn’t bothered to stop rolling, and then he did something that got you laughing really hard – I think it was one of his Pierce impressions. When I watched the video later, I thought you looked really pretty in the few seconds from when I turned the camera your way. So I saved some stills.”

Warm and flattered, Annie turns to smile at him and finds his face very close to hers. If he hadn’t still been looking down at the photo, it might have been embarrassing.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembers being covered head to toe in orange paint and feeling light as a feather.

(On a few very rare occasions, she reflects that evening while half-paying attention to a movie, Abed has made her feel the way Jeff was always so good at making her feel. Each of those times it was exciting, enticing, butterfly-inducing. Now she’s not sure, because the way Jeff often made her feel was exhilarating, yes, but it was… shallow. Fleeting. His talent for _sustained_ good feelings is considerably less powerful.

But.

Abed has only ever made her feel that way while in character. Don Draper, Han Solo, Batman: these roles all had something in common with Jeff that Abed, himself, decidedly does not. A kind of danger, an edge of thrill. Something that can make you feel lightheaded when you’re young and inexperienced. Something that’s still fun when you’re a little more grown-up, but no real substitute for meeting a fully-formed range of emotional needs.

Abed – just regular, unadorned Abed – makes her feel a lot of things that Jeff very rarely did, and a lot of things he never did at all. The few things he doesn’t know how to do on his own, he can achieve by embodying a role, but these days he’s better than ever at figuring them out for himself. He was so very good when they met, in so many ways, and he’s grown so much, and she adores him all the more for it.

Abed makes her feel heard. He makes her feel comfortable. He makes her feel smart, and interesting, and capable. He makes her feel relaxed enough to be silly, or weird, or _brave_ , and it’s not just Jeff who could never do that – almost _no one_ can. With Abed she can show every side of herself and know he’s never judging her, or thinking less of her, or getting tired of her. He accepts her, respects her, _likes_ her for every complex and contradictory thing that she is. And all of this is why he’s her best friend, she supposes; it’s everything she needs in a best friend.

It might be everything she needs.)

Her words somehow both warm the inside of his chest and coil into a stone in the bottom of his stomach when she tells him, “I wish I never had to leave.”

Annie is curled against his side on the couch, late at night, her fingers laced through his. Whatever they were watching ended twenty minutes ago and now they’re just sitting here, talking about nothing. He doesn’t want to say good night, if he’s honest, and she hasn’t chased him away, so he hasn’t left.

Abed has to swallow before he can answer. “Me too,” he says finally. It’s too simple an answer for how long he paused, and too obvious an answer in general, but it’s also an understatement and the only thing he can think of and, essentially, the honest truth.

“You’re too good to me,” she adds, sounding a little sad but also like she’s smiling – wistful? Is that it? “It makes me too comfortable. Too happy just to stay here, not worrying about my job, not worrying about other people. I could be perfectly content here in your cozy little bubble for far too long.”

“Not forever, though,” he says softly. “I don’t think anyone besides me could be happy in the Abed-bubble forever.”

“I don’t know,” she answers, thoughtful in a teasing kind of way, wiggling her fingers between his but not letting go. “If you let me out to go to work, eventually… and sometimes invite other people in. Like Troy, or Britta. Or, I don’t know, other friends. Whose names don’t start with J – at least for a little while.” She giggles quietly. “Then I think I might be able to stay forever.”

It hurts his heart to hear her talk like that. Hurts in a way that he didn’t know things could hurt, before he met her. “That would be fun,” he says, like nothing is wrong. “We could rebuild the Dreamatorium. Two-point-oh. Ready for new adventures, better than ever. Maybe you could even run simulations to help you solve crimes.”

She giggles again, a little harder. “I would love that.” She’s just humoring him now, Abed thinks, but he can’t bring himself to be offended by it. “I can’t even imagine how much inspiration you must encounter every day, somewhere as full of stories as Hollywood is. We’d never run out of scenarios.” For a moment, she seems to be thinking, and he glances down at her face. She’s smiling at her socked feet, almost like she’s self-conscious. “Maybe we could use it to help you write your screenplays, too,” she adds softly, even shyly. “You know – if you got writer’s block, or something. If you needed the help. I know you don’t always _want_ help, but – well. It’s just a thought.”

(He thinks about her words all night. There was something to the way she said it all: an eagerness to be helpful, and yet such hesitation, like she feared stepping on his toes. As if he hasn’t wished at least once a week since moving to LA that Annie could be here with him, stepping on his toes every day. Bickering with him about how the dishes should be put away. They both like to control their lives down to the smallest possible detail, and that had been perhaps the single most consistent source of friction they’d had over the years they’d lived together. And now, away from her, he misses her so much that he misses arguing about whether painkillers belong on the top or bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet.

Abed rolls onto one side, head swimming with a hundred stupid things they could never seem to agree on. They’d gotten better, over time, he thinks – she’s probably a big reason he’s so much better at compromise now than he was as a freshman. Annie taught him that sometimes other people can be right, and that sometimes no one is especially right, and that sometimes being right isn’t even worth it if it’s made you resent each other.

Maybe, he thinks, the fact that they’re both anxious control freaks is also the reason she understands him so well. He always thought of her as a balancing influence – all compassion and empathy and care where he’s rigid and distant and disconnected. And he’s all relaxed and ridiculous and playful where she’s straight-laced and image-conscious and serious. They work well because they’re complementary; he’d decided that years ago. But maybe he’s been discounting their similarities. Maybe it’s what they had in common to begin with that forms the rock-solid foundation their friendship has been building on all these years.

In the morning, he swallows and turns his open laptop towards her, a text document open to the first page. She blinks and looks up at him, questioning.

“It’s the screenplay I’ve been working on the most lately,” Abed says, his mouth feeling oddly dry. “The first draft is pretty much done. I thought – maybe I could get your feedback.”

Annie seems to melt, her big eyes going even bigger, eyebrows knitting into something that would be concern if she wasn’t smiling so much. “Abed, are you serious?”

He nods, a little too fast. “I’m getting better at taking criticism,” he assures her, clasping his hands and planting them on the table so they’ll stop fidgeting. “And it’s… you understand stories. Symbolism and narrative motifs and references. So you’d be a good first set of eyes on this. Plus, I just… trust you. I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

She reaches out and puts both hands over his, biting back a grin. “I can’t wait to read it,” she tells him.)

She doesn’t mean for Abed to see over her shoulder when she looks at the flight confirmation email on her phone. When she opens it she feels her heart start to sink, but she’s been trying not to think about it because it’s just going to bring her down when all she wants is to enjoy the time she has left here, and besides that, he hates goodbyes. He’s grown, but he still hates them, she knows that.

And if she thought she was sad skimming the email, she’s even sadder when she feels him behind her and spins around and sees that look in his eyes. He does his best to hide it, and in a moment he’s back to a neutral expression that most people would struggle to get any information from at all, but she sees it. That tiny tightening in the inside corners of his eyes, the miniscule wrinkle between his brows.

“What if I just cancelled it and never went back to Denver at all?” Annie blurts suddenly.

He blinks at her. “You can’t do that,” he says. “You have a job. One you care a lot about. And you have an apartment. And… friends.”

The only member of the study group besides Jeff who’s still in Greendale is Troy, she thinks, and Troy lives in several other places as well. Britta’s gone to Oregon and Frankie’s in Greendale, technically, but they don’t see each other much. Colorado has no other friends she can’t bear to leave behind. Instead she says, “Yeah, but just… _what if_.” She chews her lip, hoping he’ll catch on. “What would happen if I stayed?”

He tips his head at her just slightly, searching her, and she wonders what he sees. Finally he says, “Well, I suppose it is the _Federal_ Bureau of Investigation. You don’t _have_ to be in Denver. Though I guess they might prefer you to go through the standard channels for a transfer, rather than just up and moving several states away unannounced.”

“I’d figure something out,” Annie insists. “My boss really likes me. I bet if I told her that… um…”

“That your best friend is losing his mind and urgently needs a caretaker?” he supplies. “It’s nothing they could disprove by investigating. After all, I’ve always been a little crazy. It was bound to happen eventually.” He crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue, making her giggle.

“Yes! Perfect. Better than claiming a suspect showed up near my home or something, which was my first idea, but that would get me in _so_ much trouble.” She reaches for his hand. “If I told her that, she’d help me get a few weeks’ leave and a transfer. Absolutely.” Perhaps that’s a bit overly optimistic, but they’re daydreaming here.

“You could get an apartment in my building,” Abed continues, his face returned to normal. “People rotate through here all the time; I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to get one. I’d offer to let you keep staying here, but history suggests you’re a fan of having your own bedroom, and I’m afraid I’ve only got the one.”

She could stay here a good while longer before the need for her own bedroom really felt that pressing, she thinks. “And then we could spend all our free time together, just like back at Greendale. We’d eat buttered noodles and watch movies, and– and you could use your genius brain to help me solve crimes, even though I’m not supposed to tell you almost anything about my cases. I’d be all vague about the details and you’d still manage to have some brilliant insight I never would’ve thought of and…” Her eyes light up with an idea. “And after a while my colleagues would say, _Annie, where do you get all these clever ideas,_ and I’d tell them, _well, my best friend is terribly smart and always helps me see things from a new perspective._ And they’d be curious. And just then we’d catch a big case in Hollywood that would bring us into your studio, and they’d actually talk to you and realise how useful your knowledge of the setting and the people is, and you’d help me solve the case in the most exciting way, and that would be the origin story for our crime procedural. I’m the sweet-but-smart FBI agent who always follows all the rules, and you’re my ambiguously-neurodivergent consultant who helps us catch every criminal in California.”

She’d looked off into the distance at some point, imagining, but now she meets his eye again and he looks… well, _something_. His eyes are shining with admiration now instead of sadness, and he’s smiling the biggest version of his natural smile, and there’s something more to it that she can’t quite place but that kind of makes her stomach flutter.

“And,” he adds slowly, “You could keep reading my screenplays, too. To show the viewers that I trust you just as much as you trust me. And that I value your input.”

“ _Aww!_ ” Annie grips his hand harder, honoured. He’d thanked her for her feedback, before, but she wasn’t sure at the time whether he’d meant it or not. The idea that he’d appreciated her thoughts enough to ask again, even in a future merely hypothetical, warms her all the way through.

(It’s hard to say how they get so carried away, but by dinnertime they’ve sketched out a full ensemble cast and most of the first season’s major plot arcs, as well as written an outline and several scenes for their pilot episode – the origin story she’s just described, of course. The unfortunate murder victim is, in all but name, the head of Abed’s studio.

“It’s not that I dislike him personally,” Abed explains when she feigns alarm. “I barely even know him. It’s just that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone killed him.”

Of course, since it’s all hypothetical – and because in crime TV you generally want your main characters to be relatively important, he points out – FBI-consultant-Abed is an assistant director rather than still working on the production crew, and Annie has graduated from junior agent to fully-fledged and made her way onto a respected team. There is, of course, some uncertainty from her colleagues, since none of them understand him as well as she does, and they can’t trust him until he’s completely cleared as a suspect – but by late in the episode they’ve all got to admit they respect his reasoning skills, even if only grudgingly. Her boss is the one who asks him if he’d be interested in helping them out again, and he has to point out that he’s in show business and already very busy, but she makes the deal worth his while. The episode ends with him showing Annie his consultant credentials and her leaping up to throw her arms around him, excited they’ll get to work together.

“But _you’re_ the one who has to keep him on a leash, Edison,” her boss will say from behind him, her arms crossed. She tries to look serious, but can’t help smiling a bit before turning around and going back to her office.

“I thought solving crimes on the side might prove useful for my filmmaking career,” he’ll tell her then, wagging his eyebrows playfully. “After all, a good storyteller pulls from experience.” Annie giggles at that, and they cut to credits.

Real-Annie wishes she could spend another week just writing this script with him. She doesn’t _exactly_ want it to be real life, because if it were real life she’d be the kind of FBI agent who always carries a gun and works in the field and gets into all kinds of terrifyingly dangerous situations, not to mention getting _Abed_ into dangerous situations, too. She loves a good thrill, but only in a controlled environment. Like a paintball game, for instance.)

They’re sitting side-by-side on the floor of his apartment building’s laundry room, their backs to the wall, because Annie hates packing dirty clothes, and because Abed was overdue to do his own laundry anyway. They’re not talking about anything important. Chatting meaninglessly about their jobs and their lives and anything except for how soon she has to leave.

“You only have, like, five white things in that whole basket,” she comments, eyeing the load he’s waiting to put in. There are four washing machines in the whole laundry room and they’re already using up two of them. “Let me put them through with mine.”

“I don’t usually bother to separate my colours,” he points out, turning to glance at her and unable to suppress a trace of a smile at the face she makes. She _hates_ that he washes his whites with his darks with his reds. Some things never change. “They’ll be fine.”

“Please,” she implores him, and she doesn’t go full Disney face (is it self-control, he wonders, or is she just ramping up to it?) but she _does_ pout a little. “Humour me.”

He looks at his laundry basket again, considering, but more than that pretending to consider, because the wait makes her squirm. “But what if my socks get lost inside one of your blouses and end up going all the way back to Colorado with you?” he finally asks, looking at her again.

“Then…” she bites back a small smile, playful, and he thinks that he’s melting. This is his favourite side of Annie. “Well, then I’ll just keep them. As– as mementos of you. I’ll take very good care of them while they’re with me, I promise. And it’ll be all the more reason for me to see you again soon, don’t you think?”

He’s only ever so aware of his heartbeat when he’s with her.

“Is that a promise?” he asks, like she’s not making it harder to breathe.

“It’s a promise.” She puts a hand on his knee and squeezes.

“Okay. Just this once, then. For you.” He scoops two pairs of socks and two t-shirts out of his basket and adds them to her laundry bag. She brightens, and Abed knows immediately that _just this once_ is a lie, really, because he’ll do anything in the world as many times as she wants, just to see that smile. Together, they move their laundry from the washers to the driers and each begin a new load.

They keep talking about nothing, hip-to-hip on the linoleum, and she leans her head on his shoulder. Laces her fingers through his, like she’s done every day since she got here, and like she so often used to do back at Greendale. He can still remember the first time she held his hand, in their first year, when she got excited about something and just grabbed for him. Probably because he was standing closest, he’d assumed at the time, and he’s still fairly sure of that now. But to his surprise it hadn’t bothered him, so he let it happen, and over the years it turned into a habit.

Their driers are done too soon, because time is against him, and they get up to fold their clean clothes. He likes to watch her hands while she does it – she’s ten times neater than he is. It’s not that he cares, really, because no one at work seems to mind his slightly-rumpled-tee-and-sweater look anyway, but it’s nice to watch. Her gentle touch, her attention to detail, making certain every crease is just right. He admires it.

It’s an uneventful few hours of laundry, special only because he’s sharing it with her, until she’s halfway through folding her whites.

Abed only notices right away because once again, he’s watching her hands. She doesn’t say a word at first – just pulls his t-shirt out of the drier and holds it by the shoulders, staring at the _Back to the Future_ graphic on the front. Her movements slow, then still completely, and after a second his eyes flick from her grip tightening on his shirt to her face, and she looks… so _sad_.

“Annie?” he asks, very quietly, at the same time that she spins to face him with damp eyes and a determined set to her mouth and says, “Abed.”

He licks his lips, uncertain, waiting to see what it is she has to say.

“I used to do Jeff’s laundry, sometimes,” she starts, and he swallows. He’d known this could happen – despite her optimism, healing can take a long time, and sometimes you feel better and then worse again. But it’s okay. “I’d take it all out of the drier and hang up his shirts separately from mine and fold his underwear and it was totally normal and I even kind of liked it. It was like– like a little reminder that our lives were shared.”

“Okay,” he says when she stops, because it seems like he’s supposed to say _something_.

Annie bites her lip, hard, before continuing. “And I just realised something.” Suddenly she stalls, and he’s wondering if he’ll have to prompt her again, but she closes her eyes for a second and lets a long breath out, slowly. Back in, just as slow. Then she looks him in the eye and says, “I like doing _your_ laundry with mine _so much_ _better_.”

There’s a beat, and then Abed blinks. “…What do you mean?” he asks finally, unwilling to try to read between the lines on his own.

“I mean.” Apparently without thinking, she pulls his clean t-shirt to her chest, fingers scrunching deep into the cotton. “I mean – it should’ve been you, all along. Or at least for a long time. Maybe… maybe I _needed_ to be with Jeff, at least for a little while, just so that I could know it wasn’t meant to be. To get some kind of resolution to so many years of wondering. But I should’ve ended it _ages_ ago, like I’ve been saying ever since I got here. And I should’ve realised I belonged with _you_ instead.”

His grip is white-knuckle tight on the edge of the old drier, and it feels like his head has taken a vacation from his body. His heart is pounding in a way that can’t be healthy. “Annie…”

But she isn’t done. “You feel like _home_ , Abed,” she tells him, almost pleading now. “You feel more like home than anywhere I’ve ever been or anyone I’ve ever loved. You bring out parts of me that I don’t know how to show to almost anyone. You’ve seen me at my weirdest and at my messiest and none of it ever made you act any different around me. You never thought I was crazy when I had a meltdown in front of you – or maybe you did, but you didn’t mind, because you’re a little crazy too. You’ve believed in me and supported me at every turn, and you’re the _reason_ I have my dream job instead of a dull cramped office in a hospital somewhere, and when I’m with you I never want to leave. I want to stay here, and hold your hand while we watch movies I don’t understand, and help you write a TV show about us as a crime-solving duo, and find your laundry mixed in with mine.”

She looks like she’s going to cry.

He feels like, any moment now, he’s going to wake up.

“Annie,” Abed says again, swallowing hard, waiting for the disaster that stops him from seeing this through. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah,” she answers softly, nodding.

So he does. There’s no earthquake to send the apartment building toppling down on them, and no jolt as he emerges from a vivid dream sequence, and no comically-uncomfortable intrusion from one of his neighbours. He kisses her, and it’s the best thing he’s ever done in his life.

(Late that evening, they’re face-to-face in his double bed, wrapped around each other. Annie keeps tracing her finger along his jawline and back, watching his expression. He thinks he’s hiding the anxiety that keeps wriggling around in the back of his skull, but somehow she seems to see it anyway.

“I’m not lying to myself,” she tells him. “I’ve had a lot of practice, lately, learning to recognise when I am. This is for real. Jeff was… a detour. One that went too long. But I think part of me loved you the whole time. When I look back, there are so many signs. If Jeff hadn’t been there, maybe I would’ve figured it out a lot sooner.” She pulls her fingers back from his face, shifting to take his hand from where it’s been resting on her elbow. “And since I’ve gotten here, it’s been like – like the signs were suddenly right up in my face. There’s so much I’ve thought and not said, the last couple weeks.”

When she squeezes his hand, Abed squeezes back. “There’s a lot I’ve thought and not said, too,” he admits. His tone is almost as even as ever, but he doesn’t worry any more that she won’t know how much he means it. “For longer than just twelve days.”

She bites back a smile. “Like what?”

For a moment he just searches her eyes. It’s not that he doesn’t believe her; it’s just that it’s too good to be true. But she doesn’t look at him the way she looked at Jeff.

It’s so much better than that.

“Like that you could stay for two months, if you wanted. Or two years. Or forever.” He likes the way her hair looks, splayed across his pillows. “Or that you’re still the only person who can hug me or grab me or touch me at all the way you do. It’s still weird if anyone else does it. Or that I’m so proud of you it makes my chest hurt. Or that I missed you way too much, way more than anyone else except Troy – only, different from Troy. And how I missed _us_ , the way we were when it was _just_ us, after Troy and before Britta.”

Her leg shifts between his knees; she hooks her ankle around his and pulls him closer into her. “I missed that too,” she breathes, her smile so bright her cheeks must be starting to ache, and her eyes are wet again. She wipes at them with the edge of the sheet.

“I didn’t tell you how amazing you look in my kitchen, without me even setting the scene. It was like the world did it for me, just to show me what the perfect shot looks like,” Abed continues. It feels like he’s info-dumping, which usually drives people crazy, but she looks like she doesn’t actually want him to stop. “Or how I rearranged all my bathroom cupboards to be more like how you organise them just to make it feel a little more like you were here. Or when I realised the other night that you understand me better than anyone in the world, and I understand you too, and even if we get on each other’s nerves because we’re both so obsessive, that’s the real reason why we fit together so well, too. And I’d way rather learn how to compromise my crazy with yours than stay completely in control on my own.”

“I– I thought almost the same thing,” Annie tells him, weepy now. “I like that you always have a reason for how you do things, even if it’s different from mine. I want to learn everything about how you think.”

“Wait,” he interrupts, and he’s a little bit nervous now, but this next part is important. “There’s one other thing.”

“What is it?”

“I never told you that I’ve loved you for – seven years, at least.” Abed swallows. That little waver in his voice would have seemed so small if he were anyone else, but it’s the most emotional he’s heard himself get in… years. “I didn’t know it for a long time, because I didn’t have the frame of reference to recognise it for what it was. It’s not the same as it is in the movies.”

“No, it’s not.” Crying even more, Annie lets go of his hand and puts her arm around his neck, squirming tight to his chest under the covers. Her voice muffled against his shoulder, she adds, “But I like the real-life version even better.”

“Yeah.” He pulls his arms around her, stroking her hair. It’s so soft, and he could comb his fingers through it for hours, probably. “Me too.”)

Any lingering fondness she may have had for waking up next to Jeff – which usually involved either his alarm jolting her out of peaceful sleep at five AM so he could go for a run, or her having to spend ten minutes nudging him to life on the weekends when he let himself sleep in – is completely forgotten when she wakes up next to Abed instead.

The sun is shining in through the blinds they never bothered to tip shut last night, and for a while she’s vaguely aware of drifting in and out of sleep, the warmth of him somewhere close at hand. When she finally wakes up properly, it’s slow, with an awareness of his fingertips tracing from her shoulder down to her wrist and back. Annie blinks the sleep out of her eyes and peers across the pillows at him. He’s watching her, his face mostly neutral, but she knows him and she can see two things in his eyes: a kind of softness, and a sense of wonder.

“Tickles,” she murmurs, smiling a little as she pulls her arm back under the sheet.

“Sorry.” He takes his hand back immediately. “Just making sure you’re real.”

“Of course I’m real.” Then she remembers the time, years ago, that he’d quietly confided in her about a doctor who’d suggested that his childhood imaginings may be crossing the line into hallucinatory delusion. Not something Abed himself considered likely, he’d told her, but sometimes he couldn’t help worrying that he’d just make up a world he liked better and forget about the real one.

She props herself up on her elbows, shifts over close to him, and kisses him deeply.

“Could an imaginary Annie kiss you like _that?_ ” she asks, a little pleased with herself.

“Probably not,” he admits, smiling now. “I also don’t think she’d have such strong morning breath.”

She snorts out a laugh, dropping her forehead to his shoulder. “You’re no better, Casanova,” she snickers.

They’re lazy getting out of bed, only bothering when the morning breath finally gets genuinely unpleasant, and they take their time with pancakes for breakfast and don’t get properly dressed until almost noon. It’s wonderful. Annie keeps thinking: with Jeff, in retrospect, it’s like she was doing what she _thought_ an adult woman ought to do with her life. She found an adult boyfriend and did adult things like run errands on Saturdays and check the news first thing every morning. With Abed, it couldn’t be clearer that now she’s doing exactly what she _wants_ to do, and she’s exactly where she belongs. She _is_ an adult, and that means she can spend all morning in her pyjamas because she has nowhere to be anyway. It means she can eat cereal with marshmallows in it and kiss her best friend senseless and lay on his chest watching 90s cartoons on his TV if she feels like it. She’ll go back to her grown-up job soon enough, and she’ll enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean she can’t goof off and spend her free time on what _she_ wants instead of what she thinks other people expect.

(“I can’t believe I forgot the very first lesson you and Troy taught me when I moved into 303,” she murmurs sometime mid-afternoon, revelling in the comfort of his arm loose around her lower back, keeping her in place on top of him.

“How to make the perfect PB and J sandwich?” Abed asks.

“No,” she laughs. “That anyone who tells you blanket forts are for special occasions is lying, and that when you’re an adult no one can tell you not to live in one all the time.”

“You forgot that?” he says, finally lifting his head to look at her, almost incredulous. “Does that mean that until we made one last week, you hadn’t built a blanket fort since we moved out of that place?”

“Yeah,” Annie says, burying her smile in his t-shirt. “And also that I kind of stopped living the way we did, in general – I stopped doing things I wanted to just for the sake of it, and went back to living how I thought other people thought I should.”

He’s quiet for a second. Then he reaches up with his free hand to tap on the top of her head. “You usually have a better memory for lessons than that.”

She peeks up from the middle of his chest, smiling even harder. “Yeah. I promise not to forget again.”

“Good.” He quirks his little smile at her, and that free hand moves to stroke her hair, then cup her cheek. She lets him pull her upward for another kiss, her heart overflowing.

She’d been so convinced that Jeff would make her happy – _should_ make her happy – that she’d completely forgotten that Abed _does_ make her happy. The happiest she’s ever been.)

It’s midnight. Her suitcase and carry-on are packed with military precision, three copies of her boarding pass tucked into three separate, very safe spots. (“You never know when one of them might get lost or destroyed somehow,” she insists. “Or two.”) And they’re curled around each other in his bed, the blanket pulled over their heads, for a few more minutes just to themselves.

“I guess you _have_ to go back, don’t you,” he says softly, his arms snug around her shoulders. He understands, and he’s better at this than he used to be, but it’s only been maybe thirty-two hours since she told him she belonged with him, and it’s hard not to be a _little_ concerned that if she leaves the dream will end.

She digs her hands into the back of his flannel shirt. “Yeah,” she breathes. “I don’t want to.”

“But. Not for good,” he ventures, hoping it doesn’t sound as much to her like he’s pleading as it sounds to him.

“Not even for _long_ , if I have anything to say about it,” Annie answers. He feels her take a deep breath and then pause, and after a second or two she pulls her face out of his neck so she can look him in the eye, in the dim light under the blanket. “Abed, what if I… what if I _did_ get a transfer to the LA office?” she asks him. “Obviously I have to go back for a _little_ while, but – I mean – I don’t see why I couldn’t, as long as I put through the paperwork and everything. It’s not like I’m high up enough for them to care where I am. And I– I’m sure I could find a place out here somewhere… maybe this is rushing, I don’t know, I just. I suddenly know where I need to be, in a way I’ve never been so sure of before in my life, and I want to be back here as soon as I possibly can.”

And somehow, all the uncertainty is gone. “You don’t need to find a place,” he says, automatically. “You should move here.” Another callback, just as impulsive as it was the first time. Again, he’s pretty sure she catches it. Her eyes get wet and her smile gets big and she presses in close to kiss him.

He’s not getting tired of this.

“Are you sure?” she whispers, her nose pressed against his.

“Of course I’m sure. It’s not like I don’t know what I’m getting into. We lived together for years. Even if this means we have to learn to compromise again, we’ll figure it out.” Abed reaches for another kiss, missing her already. “Like I said, my apartment is better with you here. Maybe it loves you just as much as I do.”

“Okay.” She’s so close he can hear her swallow. “Okay. So I’ll be back soon. Really soon.” Her fingers have migrated up to the back of his hair, and she holds him as close as she can, and he believes her. It’s not a dream or a delusion. She loves him, and she’s coming back.

(Her flight is at 3:30 AM, so at least the airport is a _little_ quieter than usual when they get there. She cries a little in the car, and he holds her hand until she can pull herself back together, and keeps holding it all the way to the check-in, her suitcase in his other hand.

“I’ll call you when I get home,” Annie promises quietly, looking at the floor, and he appreciates that he doesn’t have to ask. “And I’ll get started on that transfer paperwork the moment I get back to the office.”

“And _I’ll_ get started building you a blanket fort for when you come back,” he answers, and she glances up at him in momentary surprise, then giggles when she catches on that he’s joking. He smiles, because now she’s laughing, and that’s all he wanted.

“I love you,” she says, grabbing at his arm and squeezing it. “You know that, right? Not– not like I’m gonna change my mind when I’m back in Denver, or like I only think so because I’m here with you right after ending things with Jeff. I _love you_ , and I always loved you, and I’m always _going_ to love you.” He watches her for a second, and she smiles slightly and adds in a hesitant whisper, “And always means always.”

“Look at you,” Abed says with a grin, reaching up to boop her nose. “Utilizing my words from the beginning of the arc to create a satisfying and heartwarming symmetry with the end.” She lifts her eyebrows a little, and he adds, “It’s the end of the arc, but the beginning of the _series_. I love you, too. And I trust you.”

At that last part, Annie lights up, and then seems to melt, looping her arms around his neck and pulling him down into a hug. “Thank you,” she says in his ear. He fits his arms around her middle, trying to memorise the way it feels to tide him over until next time, whenever that is.

This morning he’d been so unsure whether this was even real, and now it’s the realest anything has ever felt. Annie Edison loves him – like, she _really_ loves him, the same way he’s loved her for so long – and the whole world is better because of it.

“Come back soon,” he mumbles back to her, tucking his face down into her hair. It’s hitting him now, that she really is getting on a plane and leaving. She loves him and now he’s going to miss her more than ever.

“I will. Before you even know it.” She pulls back a little so she can look him in the face. “One more kiss before I go?” she asks.

He gives her more than one.)


End file.
